Archive for May, 2007

Until recently, we didn’t deem it useful to print our material (but for ISBN and Legal Deposit issues), as our grammar was very simple and the information contained was freely copied and redistributed.

However, as our regional community is interested in offering copies of our grammar in their Public Libraries, and they’ve offered some public means to print the material, we are going to make another major release, possibly named 3.0.

Major changes will include, thanks to the help of some specialized readers (mostly scholars from Spain):

Major corrections of obviously wrong reconstructions (especially from Greek and Latin), and adding of different possible reconstructions.

Vowels and Laryngeals’ question (only to show how the oldest IE phonetic sounded like)

Thorough explanation of IE dialects when possible, and that chapter left for the end of the book.

Occlusives: palatovelars are excluded (again) from the writing system, and the reasons explained.

Changes in noun declension and in its classification into different numbers, now trying to follow the Latin one

A thorough revision of verbal inflection.

Corrections of mistakes in English and other languages

Syntax: Instead of waiting for a new big second volume, we will try to include all known common features of the oldest dialects of PIE into a small chapter.

Formal issues: Notes are left for another independent (and cheaper) volume in black and white, ordered by Note number and also with PIE roots ordered alphabetically, to facilitate look up of etymologies and MIE words while reading the main book.

That book will be available first as a printed copy (some 500 pages) and possibly some time thereafter in PDF for download, and it will still have a CC-by-sa and GFDL licence. We plan to order some 50 copies, but if we receive more individual orders we will order some more – we don’t plan to earn money with this, though, so the price will be more or less that offered by the public editor.

The Dnghu Association, with the collaboration of the University and some high schools within the region of Extremadura, has elaborated a project to promote the teaching of a more general subject in the high school, “Indo-European languages of Europe”, to substitute the current general subjects of “Latin”, “Greek” and/or “Classic Culture”, in 10th and/or 11th Spanish school years.

Such a subject should obviously still include Classic Languages and Culture, but also an approach to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language and its dialects, especially those of Europe, viz. Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Greek and Albanian, as well as an introduction to the features of Indo-Iranian and Armenian.

Our first pilot experience is planned for next semester, and for the moment two schools and some University professors have agreed to participate. We want to study especially the differences in knowledge as to European languages and culture, between the students who follow the course and those who don’t, to prepare a thorough research to be sent to the Spanish Ministry of Culture, to the European Union and to Switzerland if – as expected – students who have received the lessons on Indo-European show a greater linguistic comprehension and knowledge of European cultures.

The deadline for us to send the project is next week, just in case you have some changes you want us to make in the general idea – no details will be published for the moment, though.

If you want to participate with us in this experience, either for your school or other public or private institution, or maybe as a (paid or voluntary) professor, please send us your request to oinion@dnghu.org. We will probably accept such changes made until September 2007.

To all of you well-minded Esperantists and the rest of artificial languages’ supporters:

First of all, thank you for your interest in Proto-Indo-European language revival. We appreciate your critics, whether constructive or (as usual) just annoying mails. To answer you all (we won’t do it individually),

No, we are sorry, but we didn’t unite at Dnghu to support languages different than Proto-Indo-European or other natural Indo-European languages or dialects.

No, we don’t think your games/experiments are usable, or fit, or even languages in the strictest sense, no matter the great critics/success/support/number of speakers/history/etc. you think it has or had.

Either yes, we knew about your great inventions, or no, we didn’t, but anyway we are not interested in learning or supporting them, however great you think they are.

You can read more about the usual questions emailed or posted to Dnghu about linguistic inventions in the Indo-European language blog by a co-founder.

Dnghu was created and works to discuss, talk, administer, give support, etc. to the widest variety of (Proto-)Indo-European studies possible, with the main objective of supporting PIE revival for the European Union, in the form of a Modern language. Please, don’t think we haven’t considered your old alternatives before trying to accomplish such a difficult and ungrateful task.

We are here to gather people to work together on our aim, not to convince you one by one about the advantages of reviving PIE.

P.D. – Obviously, how Wikipedia, Digg or other collaborative websites classify (or write about) Proto-Indo-European or its revival is not necessarily what we actually are or are doing: You shouldn’t trust any content outside dnghu.org without reading what We say we are doing in our association.